Dem Sen Coons: Trump Will ‘Get a Lesson in the Separation of Powers’ if he Attempts to Ignore Putin’s Aggression

Thursday on MSNBC while discussing potential sanctions against Russia for interfering in the 2016 American presidential election, Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) said when he is in office if President Donald Trump attempts to ignore Vladimir Putin’s aggressive actions, Trump will “get a lesson in the separation of powers and the constitutional role of the United States Senate.”

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On Russian hacking Coons said, “We ought to be to respond to this blatant attack on America’s democracy. It is simply stunning to me that President-elect Trump can publicly say we ought to move on with our lives and in this age of cyber security, nobody really knows what’s going on. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

He continued, “I think it would be foolish of President-elect Trump to continue to maintain his current line that we don’t know what happened and we shouldn’t take action in response to it. I think that’s just reckless.”

He added, “I think the president-elect is going to see a strengthening of the bipartisan relations on key committees, like Foreign Relations, Armed Services, like Intelligence. Where we already have an experience of working together in a bipartisan way, for example, to occasionally challenge President Obama’s actions on Israel. You heard strong bipartisan push back against Secretary Kerry’s speech in the last 48 hours and strong bipartisan opposition to the failure to veto the U.N. resolution. I think going forward, President-elect Trump will discover that a bipartisan majority of committees that are critical to his ability to pass any legislation, committees like Armed Services, Foreign Relations, Appropriations, he will ignore those bipartisan majorities at his peril. Senator Lindsey Graham chairs the subcommittee that funds our state and foreign operations budgets and Senator McCain chairs the Armed Services Committee. And I frankly think if he continues with his current actions suggesting that Vladimir Putin is someone we can do business with and ignores his aggressive actions in invading and occupying Crimea, his actions in Syria. I think President-elect Trump will get a lesson in the separation of powers and the constitutional role of the United States Senate.”